"Nearly Half of Adults Mistakenly Think Benefits of Daily Aspirin Outweigh Risks."

For years, healthy older adults were advised by doctors to take a low-dose aspirin daily as a way to reduce the risk of heart attack. But in March 2019, the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association (AHA) announced new guidelines and no longer routinely recommended a daily dose of aspirin for healthy adults over the age of 70 because the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding outweighs the benefits.

Nearly five years later, many Americans still have not received the message.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania finds in a new health survey that nearly half (48%) of U.S. adults incorrectly think that for most adults, the benefits of taking a low-dose aspirin every day to reduce the chance of heart attack or stroke outweigh the risks. In all, nearly 1 in 5 U.S. adults who say they have no personal or family history of heart attack or stroke report routinely taking a low-dose aspirin, with 10% saying they take it “basically every day,” 2% “a few times a week,” and 6% “a few times a month.”

The past rationale for routine low-dose aspirin use was that aspirin acts as a blood thinner and reduces the clotting that can clog arteries and lead to heart attack or stroke. Low-dose aspirin is still considered an important strategy for preventing heart attack in people who have been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease and are not at risk of increased bleeding.

But doctors’ recommendations for healthy adults have shifted on the risks and benefits of taking a low-dose (typically, 81 mg.) aspirin. In 2022, three years after the publication of the new AHA guidelines, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommended against starting a new regimen of low-dose aspirin use for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease for an even larger group of older adults – those 60 and older without a history of cardiovascular disease (including heart failure and stroke) or signs or symptoms of cardiovascular disease.

READ more online at:
https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/nearly-half-of-adults-mistakenly-think-benefits-of-daily-aspirin-outweigh-risks/

Answers to this question: